


Fic: The science of seduction. Chapter 1: Ice cream

by dioscureantwins



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: First Time, M/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-03
Updated: 2012-08-03
Packaged: 2017-11-11 08:06:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/476400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dioscureantwins/pseuds/dioscureantwins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John sat down next to him, grateful for the modicum of freshness the spot provided. His gaze drifted over the bent form of Sherlock, who was oblivious to the spectacle he presented as he crouched on all fours, all caught up in ‘The Work’. John noticed with a certain chagrin he didn’t even look flushed, the creamy white of the throat where it emerged from the open collar of his shirt as pale as ever. Supple and graceful, begging to be caressed with reverent fingertips, ghosted over with barely brushing lips.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fic: The science of seduction. Chapter 1: Ice cream

**Author's Note:**

> **Author's notes** : witten for sherlockmas ssv at livejournal. Betaed by the lovely [](http://swissmarg.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://swissmarg.livejournal.com/)**swissmarg**. I want to thank her very much for her help and advice. Any remaining mistakes are mine of course

John watched as Sherlock checked the car park for matching tyre tracks to establish they had ended up at the right spot. After satisfying himself on that score he headed straight for the rubbish bin, snapping on a pair of latex gloves. The cabbie – having been instructed to wait for them – watched with evident revulsion as Sherlock tipped the contents of the bin on the ground. He rummaged through the assortment of ice cream cups and spoons, paper napkins, used condoms, discarded paper handkerchiefs and other detritus of modern society.

Once the heap was thoroughly sorted, Sherlock sat pondering over the pile of discarded condoms for a while before throwing everything back into the bin. He ended with pulling the gloves from his hands and discarding them as well. Then he galloped off in the direction of the trailhead of several walks that started amongst the dense foliage.

”Come on, John.”

John sighed.

Sherlock was already at the other side of the car park, disappearing down one of the small paths that led into the glades of the wood like a greyhound hot on the trail of the hare.

John broke into a sluggish trot. At least it would be cooler among the trees, even if only slightly so. He drew his handkerchief out of his shirt pocket and swatted his brow and neck in a vain attempt to soak up some of the lukewarm sweat that kept pearling on his skin before coursing down in thin rivulets that didn’t really cool him down, just added to the general feeling of discomfort.

***

A freak heat wave had enveloped the south of England two weeks ago. The thermometer hit thirty-five degrees centigrade by ten o’clock every morning, reaching its lowest point around four a.m. at twenty-six degrees.

The warmth had been greeted with great enthusiasm after the dismal spring - nothing but rain and gales that had had a distinctly autumnal feel to them - but after a week, tempers had started fraying and the overall atmosphere in London had turned oppressive in all senses of the word.

People slept poorly in the sweltering humidity of the night. Nerves were rubbed raw during the hellish Tube journeys that hurled the packed masses through the stifling darkness while noses were offended by a heady potpourri of fresh and stale sweat battling with an unsavoury miscellany of every scent the chemist’s had on offer. The flare of the sun once the travellers emerged from the stations brought no joy as its glare was too intense. People made a run for the protection of their offices only to be freshly hit by the intense cold of the air conditioners that were humming twenty-four hours a day, adding to the general heat that hung between the buildings like a giant, malicious, tropical sea slug.

John had assumed at first he wouldn’t be too affected by the heat. He had been in Afghanistan after all, where temperatures occasionally reached the upper forties. He had nursed Mrs Hudson through the first few days, advising her to stay indoors and keep everything closed during the day. He instructed her to only open the windows at night to get some relatively fresh air in, monitoring her fluid intake and stressing the importance of regular lukewarm showers to cool down.

After a week he’d had to concede the heat was getting to him as well. This sultry weather was different from the dry heat of Afghanistan, the cloak of heavy moistness pressing him down onto the half-molten tarmac of the streets. His pride had bulwarked him for two more days but on the ninth, after a particularly harrowing day at the clinic and an equally harrying ride home on the Tube, he had dropped the hot potato – he felt like a roasted potato himself, wrapped up in tin foil and left smoldering between the hot barbecue coals – and grumbled he would give anything to end this blasted heat.

He had stood in front of the kitchen sink while voicing his complaint, greedily swallowing his third glass of water and mopping his brow with a piece of kitchen roll.

“What did you say?” Sherlock had called out from the sofa, where he lay sprawled with his laptop.

Typical. He had pointedly ignored John’s greeting when he entered the flat, yet managed to pick up John’s muted grievance. John had walked into their living room and cast his flatmate a foul look before collapsing into his chair. He had hit the button of the fan strategically positioned on the side table with an exhausted finger, the faint breeze the implement wafted in his direction doing nothing to diminish his discomfort.

“I said I wished this damned weather would break,” he had said.

“Really?” The dark eyebrows had shot up in mock confusion.

The smug bastard appeared to be the only person in London unaffected by the weather. He lolled on the sofa with his usual flourish of faint ennui, sat bent over the kitchen table engrossed in some gruesome experiment, or stood in front of the window playing his violin as though nothing out of the ordinary were going on. A barely perceptible moistness of the fringe of the curls on his nape and carefully turned-up shirt sleeves provided the only evidence the oppressive heat might be getting to him as well.

The unobstructed view of Sherlock’s forearms – which had turned out to be as smooth and elegant as the wrists and long-fingered hands they ended in – John was now constantly being treated to only added to the hot frustration he was enduring. They also provided yet another reason why he wanted this weather to end. Life was so much easier with his attractive flatmate buttoned up in a shirt with rolled-down sleeves, a jacket and a swirling coat. Sherlock's continuous, careless flaunting of his assets in front of John’s roving eyes added to the general heated vexation he was living in right now.

His fevered mind had imagined quite a few times during the past weeks that Sherlock offering these glimpses of his nakedness constituted an attempt at seducing him. Alternatively, he had almost convinced himself that he was the unwitting subject in some weird experiment Sherlock was conducting on his flatmate’s responses to various stimuli of a sensual nature.

After some careful consideration, however, he had rejected both options. The likeliest explanation was the daft git simply didn’t realise what effect the continuous parade of lovely cream skin set off by an abundance of dark curls or the edge of a rolled-up pearly grey shirt sleeve had on John. Or if he did, he didn’t care, married to his work as he was. So there, John Watson, go and find someone who will relish your attentions.

But with Sherlock around, sporting yet another crisp white shirt, his half-bare arms hovering over the laptop, absentmindedly wriggling his long, agile toes against the sofa’s arm rest, it was definitely hard to focus one’s attention on another object of desire.

***

Where had he gone off to? John halted at the fork in the path and listened, but the only sounds he could hear were his own ragged gasps for breath and some rustling of the highest tree tops in the faint wind. Even the birds were silenced under the sultriness that bore down on them. How was it possible for a man that tall to crash through the woods – the path had narrowed down considerably – without the slightest noise? Oh well, there was nothing for it but to shout.

“Sherlock!”

“Over here, John. Do keep up.”

John dragged himself for another fifty yards down the path to find Sherlock standing in the middle of a large glade – hands on narrow hips, oblivious to the blaze of the hot sun beating down on him – scanning the flowery grassland with intensity.

“Where did you go?” John could hear him murmuring. He was just about to ask what exactly Sherlock was looking for when the detective breathed, “Of course,” and broke into a run again.

He headed for a clump of trees and gave a hoot of triumph before dropping down on his knees, whipping his magnifier out of the breast pocket of his shirt. John caught up with him and saw Sherlock had situated himself next to a rectangular shape of beaten-down grass. The coolness that hung under the trees came almost as a shock. The dappled sunlight that managed to filter through the leafy canopy wasn't quite sufficient to warm the shaded ground.

“They lay here,” Sherlock said, perusing the earth between the broken stalks, carefully probing between the grass with a long left index finger. “If we find a thread of fiber we’ll be able to match it to the blanket that was found in the boot of their car.”

His nose was so close to the ground he appeared to be sniffing it as he methodically scrutinised the flattened expanse through his magnifying glass.

John sat down next to him, grateful for the modicum of freshness the spot provided. His gaze drifted over the bent form of Sherlock, who was oblivious to the spectacle he presented as he crouched on all fours, all caught up in ‘The Work’. John noticed with a certain chagrin he didn’t even look flushed, the creamy white of the throat where it emerged from the open collar of his shirt as pale as ever. Supple and graceful, begging to be caressed with reverent fingertips, ghosted over with barely brushing lips.

He sighed.

He didn’t want his mind to wander that way, not here, not now, not ever, because at the end of that route lay madness. It was useless. Sherlock had been clear on that in his own direct way right at the start.

Instead, John forced himself to think of the reason they were here: the young couple on the slab in Molly’s morgue, united in death as they were supposed in a few weeks to have been in life.

***

Sherlock had been approached the day before by the distraught parents of the boy. The Met had decided straight away the boy had killed both himself and his fiancée by deliberately driving his car into a tree. All the evidence seemed to point to that conclusion. It had been midday when the car hit the tree, the road was not busy and the tyre pattern on the road proved there had been no other car involved. The road was lined by heavy trees that threw enough shade to discount the possibility of a sudden glaring ray of sunshine blinding the boy. Suicide was the only logical conclusion.

The boy was an Oxford graduate, about to embark on a promising career in biochemistry, and to marry his childhood sweetheart in a few weeks to boot. He had had no reason to hurl himself and his intended into the sturdy trunk of a beech tree, and his father and mother were determined to clear his name of what they saw as a grave insult to their boy.

(Why did John think of the man as a boy? The man was twenty-six years of age, the girl – woman that is, or rather was – twenty-five. But they had both looked so young and vulnerable as they lay spread on the slab. Sherlock’s objective, close perusal of the bodies - examining the boy’s hands and his pathetically shriveled penis, swabbing the inside of their mouths and the girl’s vagina, asking Molly for a comprehensive list of their stomach contents and some blood and bodily fluid tests - had nearly angered him, even though he knew Sherlock was only doing his work. Doing it better than anyone else would do it.)

The parents had engaged Sherlock to prove their child was a victim of an act of God, not the perpetrator of a crime against himself and his wife-to-be. They had sat perched on the edge of the sofa at 221B, glasses of water in their hands, the wife quietly nodding and swiping at the tears that kept trickling down her cheeks as her husband sat explaining their boy was – had been – not the kind of person who would do such a thing.

John had been struck by the quiet dignity the couple exuded. He suspected Sherlock had only accepted the case because he was bored and it promised a chance to prove yet again the entire police force was comprised of a bunch of despicable idiots. However debatable his motivation, once John had cast a look on the tragic couple that had emerged from the body bags, he had been glad Sherlock had accepted the case. His intuition had told him their death had been a terrible, tragic accident, and he fully sympathised with the parents.

While still at Bart’s Sherlock had texted Greg to ask for his help in obtaining the file. Greg had delivered it in person in the evening, and Sherlock had spent all night studying the collected evidence. Or so John assumed, for when he had come down in the morning he had found his flatmate bent over his laptop with a satisfied smirk on his face, curls still damp from the shower. At John’s entrance he had sprung up, all eager activity.

“You’ve got half an hour to bathe and get dressed,” he had announced. “I’ve ordered a taxi at eight. A day out in the woods will do you good, John. Allow you to cool down a bit.”

“Case closed then?”

“Not yet. But by the end of the day it will be.” A smug grin highlighted the angles of his face. “And I will once more have shown the police to be what they are: a bunch of brazen, incapable idiots. Come on, John, hurry. Let’s go and have some fun.”

***

“Phone.”

“Where is it?”

“Right hip pocket.”

John sucked in his breath. He didn’t believe this was happening and yet it obviously was. Right next to him his flatmate was situated, round, firm arse provocatively pushed up into the air, admonishing him to wriggle his hand into the pocket of his narrow trousers at the point where his hip met his thigh. Right next to a part of Sherlock’s anatomy John was inordinately curious about. In an alternative setting, in the scenario John played frequently in his mind as he took himself in hand at night, he would have been only too happy to oblige. But not in the harsh everyday reality he had to live in of an uninterested, hotly attractive dick of a flatmate asking him to insert his hand in his trouser pocket as if this were the most ordinary thing in the world between friends.

“Thanks very much,” he said. “You can get it yourself.”

“Can’t. I’m busy.” He looked even harder at the grass, canting his hip in John’s direction with a comely sway.

“Oh, for God’s sake.” John gnashed his teeth, willing himself not to get aroused as he inched his hand into the tight material, brushing the hard jutting hipbone, felt … well, and if he did, what of it?

He looked down at the display.

“Text from Greg,” he said. “No signal from the boy’s mobile at the time of the accident. The radio and CD player were not turned on.”

“Ha, got you,” Sherlock exclaimed. He sat up, displaying a few red threads between his thumb and index finger. ”I’m sure these will prove to be of the same material as the blanket found in the car boot. So they were here, probably had sex on the blanket. We’ll have Molly confirm that assumption as I’m pretty sure she’ll confirm they had sex a short time before their demise. Do you notice how the stalks of the grass have been whipped down in different directions? They rolled around a lot. If they’d been having a picnic we should have found the remains either here, in the rubbish bin in the car park – the council empties those bins once a week, last time was five days ago, I checked – or in their car. Since we didn’t, I assume they didn’t create that pattern by groping around for the food and drink.”

He waited, sitting back on his haunches. John kept resolutely quiet. He didn’t feel the need to voice his opinion on the matter. The spot was indeed perfect for languidly lingering lovemaking, secluded and cool beneath the trees, screened off from prying eyes by the tall grass.

Sherlock sprang to his feet.

“Right,” he started rattling off. “I presume they achieved a satisfactory orgasm here, then made it back to the car. Both still high on the endorphins, heads in a post-coital blur. They sit in the car and talk, laugh, eyes for nothing but each other, exchange a few more kisses, unexpected bend in the road and boom, headed into the tree. That must be it, John. I’m sure of it. Well, off to Lestrade then to set the picture right. _Come along._ We haven’t got all day, you know?”

He made to sprint off when his phone started ringing. John looked down at the screen.

“It’s Molly.”

He handed the phone over to Sherlock, who answered the call with a gruff: “Why don’t you text, Molly? You know I prefer to text.”

John could have given him a very accurate explanation why Molly preferred to call as he listened to the brisk, dark baritone. He shivered and imagined Molly was undergoing the same sensation standing in her lab right now. What would it feel like for a woman? The same urgency pooling deep down in the belly, trickling further southward where the loins could be squished together to contain and yet deliciously heighten the need as it was fed by the growling dark voice?

Sherlock had put his other hand in his pocket and was swaying his hips in a little circle as he often unconsciously did while answering his phone. John surmised it was subliminal uneasiness surfacing, Sherlock’s way to remain calm as he was forced into unwanted interaction with another human being, even if it was only by mobile. Whatever it was, it certainly drew forth a very strong, unsought reaction from John every time the lanky hips with that nice, tight bum made their little round from one side to the other, never once stuttering in their perfect rotation, as John could leisurely observe all the better now that there was no jacket to partially obstruct the view of Sherlock’s arse.

This was hell. John stood up and turned around, willing himself not to look.

“All right, thank you, Molly. And remember, text me next time.” Sherlock rang off.

“What’s wrong with some of these people?” he muttered beneath his breath. “Why don’t they ever listen?” John could feel him glowering at his phone. He heaved a sigh and strode off imperiously, leaving John no choice but to run to catch up. The heat was a slap in his face after the crispness the shade under the trees had provided.

“What was that about?”

“Ice cream.”

“What?”

“Ice cream. In their stomachs and saliva and spread all over their clothes. I asked Lestrade to send over the clothes to Molly so she could run some tests on them. Ice cream was the last thing they ate, they were in fact licking their ice cream as he smashed them into that tree. There was so much blood, the ice cream never made it to the evidence report. Idiots, all of them.” Sherlock shook his head in disbelief at the eternal stupidity of the entire police force before continuing: “He had strawberry and she raspberry, apparently. No mingling of the different flavours in their saliva, though, so that nicely throws my deduction straight out of the window. Damn, there’s always something. And where did they buy the bloody stuff?”

The rigid set of his shoulder blades beneath the shirt spoke volumes as Sherlock jogged along the path. He halted abruptly as he reached the edge of the woods, causing John to nearly crash into him.

“Well, that’s part of the problem solved.” He eyed the ice cream van that had materialised on the other side of the car park during their sojourn in the forest. The owner was busy rolling down the sun screen at the side of the vehicle, providing a spot of shade for his customers and guarding his wares against the direct glare of the sun.

Sherlock dashed towards him. “Hi there, is this your usual venue? What flavours do you sell?” he barged straight in.

The ice cream vendor threw him a weary look. “You can find me here seven days a week from May to September,” he answered. “Which flavour do you want? I have more than thirty. Bit much to name them all.”

“Strawberry and raspberry.”

“I do stock those. Would you like a cup or a cone?”

“On second thought, I won’t have any. Good day.” Sherlock pivoted on his heel, leaving the vendor to grumble about people unable to make up their minds.

“I could have done with a spot of ice cream actually,” John complained as they climbed back into the cab. Although the cabbie had parked the car in the shade, the interior proved to be stifling hot.

“Nonsense,” Sherlock cut him short.

In the front the cabbie had wrestled his bulk behind the steering wheel again with much puffing and grunting. His body gave off an overpowering stench of hot sweat. It ran off his bald head in thick beads, to pool in the folds off his neck before hurling itself into the folds of his collar. John pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket and pretended to sneeze into it to reduce the disgusting stink to a level he could manage. It was worse than the smell in the hospital tent in Afghanistan.

“New Scotland Yard,” Sherlock instructed the man. He reached over and slid the compartment window shut with a gesture that set a new standard for coupling rudeness with efficiency. Normally John would have felt himself compelled to chide Sherlock for this kind of behaviour, but now he heaved a sigh of relief. He let the handkerchief drop and cranked open the window on his side in the faint hope of catching some wind as they rode.

“It would have been nice,” he muttered.

“Oh, stop it,” Sherlock said, annoyance bouncing over his features. “Think, won’t you? Why did that boy drive into that tree while eating an ice cream?”

“It wasn’t him eating his ice cream. It was watching her eating her ice cream.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sherlock scoffed. “Why would that induce him to smash his car, killing them both in the process?”

“It’s obvious,” John said.

“It isn’t obvious to me.”

John threw a glance out of the corner of his eye at his flatmate to check whether he was being led on but Sherlock appeared to be genuinely in the dark. The deep breath he took next did actually help to calm him.

“It can be very distracting to watch somebody lick an ice cream,” he explained. “You said yourself they had probably made love recently. To see her lapping an ice cream cone would remind him of some of the acts they had probably engaged in recently. Especially with the endorphins still coursing through his body. And think of all the pheromones that must have been floating around them.”

Sherlock fixed him with a look, his expression serious.

“You’re convinced you’re right, aren’t you?”

Now it was John’s turn to huff.

“Sherlock, I know I am right. To quote one of your favourite expressions: it’s the only possible explanation of all the facts. Believe me, watching somebody lick an ice cream can be distracting if you’re in the right mood. Hell, watching somebody do that can _get_ you into the right mood. Ask anyone.”

Sherlock was silent for an instant.

“Fine,” he decided at last. “I’ll advance your theory as the solution in our assessment of the case to Lestrade. If he accepts it I guess you must be right.”

***

The heated air in Greg’s cramped office was stifling. The faint breeze that wafted in through the open window and the small fan on his desk managed to ruffle the massive stack of papers in the in-tray but didn’t even start to chase away the sultry humidity that had enveloped the small boxed rooms and endless corridors that constituted the New Scotland Yard offices.

John sat cradling the cup of slowly heating water that had been lukewarm to begin with as it had trickled out of the tap, studying Greg’s face while Sherlock talked the D.I. through his deductions.

Sherlock threw John a quick sideways glance before he came to his conclusion: “ … so the boy was distracted by watching his fiancée lick the ice cream. He wasn't paying attention to the road, didn’t notice the bend and drove them straight into the tree.”

Greg nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “Of course, that’s how it happened. You must be right, Sherlock. I’ve got to say, I’m glad you decided to take the case. Once I met the parents I had a very bad feeling about the conclusions our colleagues at the Met had come to. Thank you.”

Now it was John’s turn to stare at Sherlock. In his smoothest tones his flatmate cooed: “You should really thank John. He was the one to provide the final piece that completed the puzzle.” He smiled at John first, Greg next.

John felt himself redden. Hastily he gulped some of the water.

“Thank you, John,” Greg said in his honest voice. He looked a bit nonplussed but that expression seemed to be stuck to his face permanently whenever Sherlock was around. Some tissues were pulled out of a box that was hidden beneath the clutter on the desk and put to use in swiping his forehead and neck. His anti-perspirant had to be extremely strong, as the fabric of his shirt beneath his armpits appeared to be dry.

“Do me a favour, will you?” he addressed Sherlock. “Please be so kind as to type the report and send it over to me. I’m literally swamped with paperwork right now.” He gestured helplessly at the chaos in front of him.

Sherlock curled his lip in distaste. “You know I don’t concern myself with those menial tasks,” he said. “If you insist John will be happy to help, however. Come on, John. We’re going.”

He rose and swept out of the room without so much as a parting look at Greg. John wondered briefly how he managed to give the impression he was majestically drawing his coat around him while wearing nothing but a shirt and a pair of trousers but decided not to pursue the problem in the interest of his own personal sanity. The weather and the exertions of the morning had been too exhausting.

“I’ll send you my version of the report tomorrow morning at the latest,” he promised Greg. “See you later.”

“Yeah.” Greg waved a tired hand at him. “The heat doesn’t affect him at all, does it? He doesn’t slow down even the tiniest. There’s just more of him.”

“John,” came a yell from down the corridor.

John sighed. “Yeah,” he said and turned to hurry after Sherlock once more.

***

As they descended from the cab in front of 221B, John told Sherlock he was going to buy himself and Mrs Hudson an ice cream now. A new Italian ice cream parlor had opened up three weeks ago in Marylebone Road. The timing couldn’t have been better. Long queues blocked the pavement every evening. John had to admit the ice cream was among the best he had ever tasted. He had braved the queues every other night for the past two weeks. Hopefully they would be shorter during daytime.

“Would you like an ice cream as well?” he asked, certain Sherlock would refuse. Sherlock started another lip curl, then thought better of it. “I’ll have one actually,” he announced, royalty granting a favour to a faithful subject. “Two scoops of strawberry and one vanilla on top. On a cone.”

“Are you sure? They’ve got the most exotic flavours: rice; and bacio, which is hazelnut and chocolate; limoncello …”

“Strawberry and vanilla,” Sherlock interrupted him.

John shrugged his shoulders. Sherlock’s preference for infantile flavours didn’t really surprise him. He crossed the road so he could walk in the shade on his trek to Marylebone Road.

***

As he entered the hallway half an hour later he could hear Mrs Hudson’s voice drifting down the staircase. Upstairs, he found his landlady installed in his chair, fan at full blast chugging away next to her, a glass of cold water with the condensation pearling on the outside in her hands. Sherlock was stretched out in his customary position on the sofa, eyes closed as his landlady heaped praise on him for 'helping those poor people who must be so unhappy right now'.

“John!” she cried out at his entrance. “And you helped Sherlock reach the right conclusion.”

“Apparently, yes.” He walked over to the table and unpacked the ice creams. He handed Mrs Hudson her cone – coffee, hazelnut and lemon – then gave Sherlock his and seated himself in Sherlock's chair with his own zuppa inglese, rice and bacio.

Sherlock scooted up into a half-reclining position, leaning against his favourite fleur-de-lys brocade cushion shoved up against the armrest. He studied the ice cream with slightly narrowed eyes and brought it in front of his mouth. The pink tip of his tongue shot out to start a languid exploration. He dragged it along the scoops piled on the cone, from the base of the lowest one to the top of the vanilla that crowned the whole concoction. He rotated the cone with nimble fingers and repeated the process several times on different sides. He licked his lips next before turning his face to look at his landlady and flatmate, mouth shiny and wet, tongue tip chasing a dollop of ice cream that clung in the corner of his lips.

John caught himself staring open-mouthed. He gulped and dared a look at Mrs Hudson, who was gaping at the sight as well, jaw dropped at an unlikely angle, molten ice cream dribbling over her cone to pool at the edge where it was held by her fingers. Under John’s gaze she appeared to come to herself again. She blinked a few times before shooting him a quick, embarrassed glance. They attacked their own cones in unison with a few desperate licks, John not tasting the substance at all, utterly convinced Mrs Hudson was enjoying her ice cream as little as he was. Still, he really didn’t want to have to contemplate his respected elderly landlady being compensated for the loss of a pleasant temporary release from the infernal heat thanks to the cooling qualities of ice cream, by the onset of another, more primitive, urge.

Sherlock refocused on his cone and eyed it dismissively. “The most ludicrous solution but the right one. Lestrade bought it.” He snorted. “Imagine anyone getting distracted by watching someone eat an ice cream. People are idiots, really.”

He twirled the creamy white of the top against the edge of his lips, nipping with delicate teeth before swirling his tongue around the vanilla.

John felt a drop of his own ice cream fall on his hand. He slurped it up and took a few quick bites, still gawking at his flatmate.

Sherlock engulfed the top of his cone with his lips in earnest now, drawing them tight, sliding down and back up with hollowed cheeks, the black glossy curls on top of his head bouncing with the motion. John was sure he heard a plop as Sherlock pulled his lips loose and started lapping with long strokes next.

“Hmm,” he growled, his voice deep and slick. “This is actually rather good, John.” He aimed another swipe with his tongue before his shiny pink lips descended over the lucky inanimate delicacy once more.

John was sure he actually whimpered at the mesmerising sight. He squirmed in his seat, definitely grateful he had decided on a loose pair of slacks and a wide linen shirt that morning. He desperately hoped together they would manage to screen the erection that had traitorously sprung up between his legs from Mrs Hudson’s piercing gaze. Thank God her eyes were centred on Sherlock once more.

“Do you agree with Lestrade, Mrs Hudson?” Sherlock asked as if he were genuinely curious about his landlady’s opinion on the subject. His mouth was still hugging the ice cream closely. He dragged it past the buxom cushion of his bottom lip.

Mrs Hudson threw John a look of such piteous sympathy over the top of her cone he felt certain all the loose trousers and shirts in the world couldn’t have helped him hide the evidence of his distressed arousal from her discerning eyes.

“Oh, I don’t know, Sherlock,” she said. Was there a hint of weariness in her voice? “I really should be going downstairs and lie down. This weather uses me up enormously. Thanks for the ice cream, John.”

She raised herself with a sigh, still licking her cone distractedly, and headed towards the door. John stood up abruptly as well.

“Unff. I think that’s very sensible,” he croaked. “I’m also going for a little nap. It was an early morning after all.”

Sherlock glanced up at him. “Fine,” he said slowly, lips glossed over with a film of molten cream. John fled to the privacy of his bedroom. It was either that or bodily flinging himself at his asexual flatmate.

Once upstairs he threw the remains of his own ice cream into the paper bin under his desk – he’d worry about cleaning the mess later on – and started undoing the buckle on his belt with trembling fingers. A steady stream of expletives fell from his mouth. It was even hotter up here than downstairs in the living room but he didn’t care.

He worked open the button and zip of his trousers and struggled out of them together with his pants. He dropped forward on his knees onto the bed and took himself in his left hand, cupping his scrotum with the right. He started tugging frantically, squeezing and caressing his balls with a desperate palm. He swirled his thumb around the head of his cock, spreading the juicy pre-come over the soft, sensitive flesh.

Oh God, it was torture, absolute torture, a daily hell he had to endure.

He arched into the mixture of bodily pleasure and mental pain his actions were causing, undulating his hips as he rode his hand. His mind whipped up the image of Sherlock – the tight bum, the voluptuous carmine lips – and suddenly his phantom was kneeling in front of John, ready to serve, eager to provide and receive.

“There,” John grunted, thrusting his hips forward. The Sherlock of John's fantasy opened his mouth to invite him in, passively allowing John to fuck his mouth, ensuring his lips were clasped tight around John’s shaft. He trailed his tongue in a tight hug along John’s length as John pushed himself in and out between those fuckable lips, clasping the cheeks of John’s arse with long-fingered hands, drawing him in until he hit the back of Sherlock’s throat.

Even though Sherlock had his mouth stuffed full with John’s cock he managed to throatily lisp around him: “This is actually rather good, John.” He was gazing up at John from beneath heavy lids, blue-green glints blinking in the gray of his irises, dark locks falling in a jumbled heap over his forehead.

“Yes, Sherlock.” John was fucking the hot, red mouth with abandon now, head thrown back as he shoved his throbbing erection deep into the luscious, warm wetness. His sperm rose, rushing forward to completion, and he spent himself to the captivating image of his cock embedded between those salacious lips. He released his load into the long, alabaster throat, Sherlock's doppelganger grunting his approval and swallowing the hot gushes that kept surging until John collapsed onto the bed, worn out and empty. His member was painful to the touch after the violent pulling it had undergone. He lay shivering with the last tremors of his orgasm, delighting in the afterglow as it slowly dissipated from his body.

Over near the doorway he heard a faint shuffling noise. John cracked open an eyelid in time to see five agile toes attached to a long foot invade his field of vision. He bolted upright.

“Sherlock!” His exclamation conveyed hot shame, acute embarrassment and fully justified anger all jumbled together in an overwhelming mixture of distress. He grabbed for his pillow to cover his nakedness.

The actual git had the bloody nerve to laugh, drawing the lips John had been visualising around his member only a minute ago into a wide smile.

“So you _were_ right,” he purred. “And my little experiment _did_ work.”

He plunked himself onto the bed, all casual nonchalance as if spying on one’s friend having a go at himself while fantasising about you were a daily occurrence among flatmates all over the world.

He extended a long arm and drew John close. “You’re a funny one,” he murmured. “How much longer were you going to deny me, deny yourself? You tease.”

He nuzzled John’s neck with his nose first, but soon his lips - _those lips_ \- descended right on the sensitive spot beneath John’s earlobe where his hot blood raced, while John tried to grasp what was happening to him.

“What … how …” he stuttered but found himself cut short, not by the usual scathing remark but by the firm press of Sherlock’s lips against his.

John decided his post-orgasmic haze must be inducing his imagination to run away with him. He succumbed to the fantasy, returning the pressure, initiating a little waltzing of their tongues and found Sherlock accepting the invitation readily. As he would be bound to do, since none of this was real anyway.

“It is real, John,” Sherlock murmured against his mouth. “God, you’ve no idea what a marvelous picture you presented just now. I’ve been hungering after you for months. I was growing quite frustrated with the way you kept ignoring all the signals I sent you. You had almost convinced me you weren’t interested. I’m so glad to find you are after all.”

To affirm John wasn’t dreaming, Sherlock guided John’s hand to the positive proof straining against the fabric of his trousers.

“But … but …“ John fought the bewilderment that was clouding his brain. “Whatever happened to you being married to your work? I thought you weren’t interested. You were quite definite when I brought up the subject. I don’t understand.”

Sherlock drew himself up to gaze at John with wide eyes. “I’d say today you’ve shown once again you’ve become an indispensable part of it, wouldn’t you agree? Without you I would never have hit upon the proper solution.”

John blushed under the unexpected praise. A warmth that was for once agreeable spread through his chest as he made out the implications of Sherlock’s words.

“Come here,” he grunted and drew Sherlock down with him, fumbling with the zip of his trousers.

Bacio was John’s favourite ice cream flavour, but the taste and texture of that delicous confection couldn’t compare to the taste and texture of Sherlock’s cock as he was finally, finally allowed to lick the cream that welled up at the top of that mouthwatering cone.

 

 

Author’s note: bacio means kiss in Italian  



End file.
